The good news is that there are around 100 state schools in the UK that teach Latin (and 500 pay schools too). The bad news is that isn't very many really, and the numbers could be falling. Doing an MHD, I shall share with you, comrades, what I have read in the Guardian: £4.5m rescue plan for state-school Latin ends in shambles.

Is Latin important enough to displace useful subjects like maths, German and media studies?

Since you asked, I would have to say that Latin is a much more beneficial and worthwhile language to study in school than any of the alternative "living" languages.

People can learn German through exposure, as it is still spoken today. The only real opportunity someone has to expand his knowledge of this rich historical language and its tremendous contributions to so many current languages is through study in the classroom.

I agree with (what I believe to be) Garzo's take on this matter ; i e, that it will be a great pity when, in the course of time and befuddled government programmes, the last Latin course in English schools will, as the Chinese expression goes, 因病逝而作罷. One can't help but wonder if there are not courses in the current school curriculum not quite as vital as maths, (living) foreign languages, and learning to deal with a media situation characterised by the two watchwords «spin» and «profit», that could give up a little of their time in order to maintain this link with our cultural heritage. But the fact that the Guardian's education correspondent (or his editor) chose to end his article by appending the following piece of information

· Delegates at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) conference in Brighton called for an increase in security for teachers who say they are facing increasingly vicious attacks from pupils.

They have called for metal detectors and closed circuit television in schools.

indicates that the prognosis is pessima, and not only for Latin teaching....

Brazilian dude wrote:I wouldn't say that Latin has died, I would say that it has undergone an upgrading ,

I agree - sort of like a certain type of carnivorous dinosaur evolving into ostriches, as mentioned in the article reproduced, infra, from the Science section of the New York Times (note the fine photos in the original)....

Henri

March 25, 2005

Dinosaur Find Takes Scientists Beyond Bones

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Alive as dinosaurs may seem to children, knowledge of them as living creatures is limited almost entirely to what can be learned from bones that have long since turned to stony fossils. Their soft tissues, when rarely recovered, have lost their original revealing form.

But now a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex discovered in Montana has apparently yielded the improbable, scientists reported yesterday: soft tissues, including blood vessels and possibly cells lining them, that "retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity and resilience."

Moreover, an examination with a scanning electron microscope showed the dinosaur's blood vessels to be "virtually indistinguishable" from those recovered from ostrich bones. The ostrich is today's largest bird, and many paleontologists think birds are living descendants of some dinosaurs.

In a paper being published today in the journal Science, the discovery team said the remarkable preservation of the tissue might open up "avenues for studying dinosaur physiology and perhaps some aspects of their biochemistry." Speaking at a teleconference, the team leader, Dr. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, said, "Tissue preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been noted in a dinosaur before."

Dr. Schweitzer, as well as scientists not connected with the research, cautioned that further analysis of the specimens was required before they could be sure the tissues had indeed survived largely unaltered. They said the extraction of DNA for studies of dinosaur genetics and for cloning experiments was only a long shot, though at least reasonably possible.

In a separate article in Science, Dr. Lawrence M. Witmer, an Ohio University paleontologist who had no part in the research, said: "If we have tissues that are not fossilized, then we can potentially extract DNA. It's very exciting."

If the tissues are as well preserved as they seem, the scientists hold out some hope of recovering intact proteins, which are less fragile and more abundant than DNA. Proteins might provide clues to the evolutionary relationship of dinosaurs to other animals and possibly help solve the puzzle of dinosaur physiology: whether, as argued, dinosaurs were unlike other reptiles in being warmblooded.

"If we can isolate certain proteins, then perhaps we can address the issue of the physiology of dinosaurs," said Dr. Schweitzer, a biologist affiliated with Montana State University as well as North Carolina State.

Excavations of dinosaur remains sometimes turn up preserved tissues other than bone, including feathers, embryonic fragments and internal organs. But as Dr. Schweitzer's group noted, while in these cases their shapes may be preserved, their original composition has not survived "as still soft, pliable tissues."

It is usually difficult to determine what such modified tissues were like in life when fossils are more than a few million years old. The last of the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

The T. rex with the soft tissue was found in 2003 by a fossil-hunting team led by John R. Horner, a paleontologist with the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State . Mr. Horner is a co-author of the journal report, along with Jennifer L. Wittmeyer of North Carolina State and Dr. Jan K. Toporski of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The trials of fieldwork led to the discovery of soft tissue inside a thighbone.

Scientists cannot be sure why the tissues survived as they did, though the protection afforded by the bone was almost certainly one factor. Another may have been the possibility that the animal was buried in a virtually oxygen-free environment very soon after death.

Geologically, the T. rex skeleton was excavated from the Hell Creek Formation, in sandstone laid down about 70 million years ago. Geographically, this was deep in a remote corner of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, in Montana. The only way to get the heavy fossils out was by helicopter.

Tyrannosaurs were famously huge predators. This one, estimated to have been 18 years old at death, was not as large as most. Its femur, or thighbone, was three and a half feet long; some T. rex femurs are at least a foot longer. But the creature was large enough so that some of the rock-encased long bones had to be broken in half to fit a helicopter rig - not something paleontologists like to do.

At a laboratory in Bozeman, scientists inspected the broken thighbone before anyone had a chance to apply preserving chemicals, which would have contaminated the specimen. Dr. Schweitzer and colleagues noticed unusual tissue fragments lining the marrow cavity inside the dense bone. Fossilization had not been complete.

When fossilizing mineral deposits in the tissues were dissolved by a weak acid, the scientists were left with stretchy material threaded with what looked like tiny blood vessels. Further examination revealed reddish-brown dots that the scientists said looked like the nuclei of cells lining the blood vessels.

I agree - sort of like a certain type of carnivorous dinosaur evolving into ostriches, as mentioned in the article reproduced, infra, from the Science section of the New York Times (note the fine photos in the original)....

Brazilian dude wrote:... Nah, I would go from a dinosaur to a reptile.

I may very well be wrong, BD, but my impression is that none of the reptiles around today are thought to be descendents of dinosaur spp. And as for descendents of Latin like Portuguese (and in particular its Brazilian variant), I regard them as distinctly more warm-blooded and bird-like than reptilian. It's feathers, not scales, the girls wear (and little else besides) during the carnival in Rio - or have I been misinformed ?...

Henri

Last edited by M. Henri Day on Sun Apr 03, 2005 3:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Brazilian dude wrote:... Nah, I would go from a dinosaur to a reptile.

I may very well be wrong, BD, but my impression is that none of the reptiles around today are thought to be descendents of dinosaur spp. And as for descendents of Latin like Portuguese (and in particular its Brazilian variant), I regard them as distinctly more warm-blooded and bird-like than reptilian. It's feathers, not scales, the girls wear (and little else besides) during the carnival in Rio - or have I been misinformed ?...

Henri

Last edited by M. Henri Day on Sun Apr 03, 2005 3:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

BD, we've been hearing little tantalizing snippets of your frustrations concerning your lack of feminine companionship. You mentioned that the models on the beach weren't ever seen by you, and the beauties at Carnival weren't seen by you. Perhaps either your standards are too high, or your horizons need broading,
1)suggestion:
STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD
go outside and find yourself a honey, a cutie patootie,a little tweety birdie TO CALL YOUR OWN!\
2) look harder, look on the inside rather than just a shell.....yeah I know that's not gonna happen, well, nevermind!

I agree with (what I believe to be) Garzo's take on this matter ; i e, that it will be a great pity when, in the course of time and befuddled government programmes, the last Latin course in English schools will, as the Chinese expression goes, 因病逝而作罷. . . .

Thinking back on it, I seem to remember a classmate one of my daughters having to travel to a different, nearby high school to take Latin and then go back to his own school, since it wasn't offerred at his school. I think popular languages such as Spanish and French are offered at all high schools, but German and Latin are only offered at certain schools. But at least it is still offerred.

. . . But the fact that the Guardian's education correspondent (or his editor) chose to end his article by appending the following piece of information

· Delegates at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) conference in Brighton called for an increase in security for teachers who say they are facing increasingly vicious attacks from pupils.

They have called for metal detectors and closed circuit television in schools.

indicates that the prognosis is pessima, and not only for Latin teaching....

Henri

So much for a society that tries to control handguns . . .

I don't happen to have a copy of Latin for All Occasions by one of Henri's homonyms, Henry Beard, but I remember from a radio interview years ago that one of his sayings was "When spears are outlawed only outlaws will have spears."

Larry, I may have become disoriented in the media whirlpool, but it is my understanding that violence in schools is no less prevalent in societies in which weapons control is less, shall we say, rigorous. Am I deceived ?...

Larry, I may have become disoriented in the media whirlpool, but it is my understanding that violence in schools is no less prevalent in societies in which weapons control is less, shall we say, rigorous. Am I deceived ?

Violence might be equally "prevalent"... The difference simply lies in the fact that guns make it much more dangerous. It's up to you to judge whether that's "relevant" or not.